Hey there!
I’m Phoebe Lapine–gluten-free chef, 3 x published author, and SIBO & Hashimoto’s advocate.
Here’s my story in a nutshell of how I came to inhabit this corner of the internet. If you want my more serious credentialed bio, you can scroll for that below!
My mom was the original gangster of crunchy health food.
Growing up, her idea of an after-school snack was organic fruit leather that was just a touch too leathery, various carob-covered nuts from the bulk bin, or a rice-based ice cream that tasted like lightly sweetened snow. Naturally, I spent most of my childhood rebelling against this menu, and going into full Fruit-by-the-Foot binge mode at friends’ houses.
It took me a few decades to get on board. But since you’re here, it’s safe to say that all those bowls of millet eventually caught up with me. And it’s my daily mission on this site to make them taste less like something that should be served to Oliver Twist.
Cooking was something that grew on me much sooner. I was so starved for creativity during my first job out of college that in 2008, I ended up starting a food blog on the side to feel some sort of purpose and re-find my sanity. That led to a cookbook deal, which gave me the confidence to leave said cushy corporate job at the height of the recession to launch a career in food.
In my early twenties, I hustled hard and took on pretty much any odd food job that involved buttercream and not my naked body. And it was all going pretty well until I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease: Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.
Things changed after that. I spent most of my mid-twenties trying to get on board with the health hand I was dealt, and using my professional experience as a gluten-free chef to attempt to heal my body with leafy greens.
I launched this site in 2012 as a virtual home for my gluten-free comfort food—-recipes that marry my old life of chef-y hedonism with my new one of being conscious of my health. I try to keep things approachable, accessible and not-too crunchy. You won’t find baked goods that require 10 different alternative flours, or ingredients that need to be sourced from the specialty health food stores of my childhood.
You’ll also find healthy hedonist travel guides, and insights about balanced lifestyle choices beyond what’s on your plate…like all the reasons why kale margaritas are better than no margaritas at all.
At the beginning of 2015, I decided to double down on all the self-care practices that fell by the wayside when I left the corporate world to become a professional slicer and dicer, by making one lifestyle change, one month at a time.
You can read the archives of the yearlong Wellness Project series to explore my roadmap for healing. Or better yet, read my book The Wellness Project that puts all the lessons of how I healed my Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis into perspective.
Shortly after this book was published, I started to notice some weird GI symptoms creeping back into my life. The diagnosis I received was SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth). That kicked off a whole new phase of my healing, and series of resources for this site.
I started a podcast, SIBO Made Simple, and later published a book by the same name. I also started creating recipes and meal plans for the highly restrictive low FODMAP diet.
My mission on this site is to give folks who feel overwhelmed by all the health to-do’s on the internet, permission to choose their own wellness adventure. To find practices that are worth the time, money and energy we spend on them, and a shame-free way to kick those that aren’t to the curb.
You can find love (of food) in a hopeless place of thyroid and gastrointestinal dysfunction.
It’s my hope that by following along, you’ll be better able to find your own sweet spot between health and hedonism, wherever it may be.
With health and hedonism,
Phoebe
More Notable Things
Most of the recipes on this site were developed in a 400-square-foot studio apartment in Manhattan. I now happily live in Brooklyn with a dining room table and my husband Charlie.
Every Sunday I send a weekly newsletter with behind-the-scenes fodder, musings, upcoming events and a recap of all the recipe happenings here. Subscribe to get in on those juicy bits.
In 2013, Food & Wine magazine named this site as one of the top food blogs in their first ever Digital Awards. Saveur also nominated Feed Me Phoebe as one of the Best Special Interest Blogs in their 2015 Food Blog Awards.
For my more formal bio, in which I humble brag in the third person, you can see below or visit my professional site here.
My menu of odd food jobs today mostly includes teaching private cooking classes in NYC, developing recipes for brands and magazines, freelance writing, hosting cooking shows, and speaking to women about how to do right by their bodies without giving up their lives.
I have been a culinary instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education, the Natural Gourmet Institute and Haven’s Kitchen, among others.
I have spoken at Well Summit, Good Fest, WEForum, and Blog Her Health, among others.
If you’re a brand or a person with a video camera or an editor of a publication or just one of my NYC neighbors who wants to be fed, you can find a full menu of ways we can collaborate here.
If you have questions or suggestions, ping me! I love getting reader feedback in my inbox.
Thank you for being here and being awesome.
More About Phoebe Lapine
Phoebe Lapine is a food and health writer, gluten-free chef, speaker, and the voice behind the award-winning blog Feed Me Phoebe. Named by Women’s Health Magazine as the top nutrition read of 2017, Phoebe’s debut memoir, The Wellness Project, chronicles her journey with the autoimmune disease, Hashimotos Thyroiditis. She is the host of the SIBO Made Simple podcast and author of the new book by the same name which helps those newly diagnosed or chronically fighting small intestine bacterial overgrowth. Phoebe’s work has appeared in Food & Wine, Marie Claire, SELF, Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Mind Body Green, who named her one of 100 Women to Watch in Wellness. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and beagle.